Despite graduating as an engineer, John opted for the independent spirit and frenzy of the trading pits from Chicago to London to Singapore for 15 years. When that mode was disrupted by electronic trading, John founded Grasshopper one of the only independent, private, proprietary firms in Asia with no clients and no outside investors.
Grasshopper trades several billion dollars in notional every month, employs ~65 technologists, and builds its own strategies and technologies. We trade a wide breadth of instruments from derivatives to crypto… but what we really do is solve problems.
Disciplines from coding for low-latency, to building resilient micro-structure, to platforms for risk and data, to agile and complexity leadership, to market making/taking strategies, etc. All of these problems we solved ourselves.
John also has deep interest in societal improvements. As such he invests in fringe but game changing endeavors from cryptocurrencies to plant-medicines to wellness & transformation.
John is known to be a salty but compassionate leader with an eye for positive change and creation of value. Do not go to him if you want vanilla responses based on common perspectives.
Outside of professional life, John is an avid sportsman from kitesurfing to baseball to golf. He splits his time between Singapore and Bali.